


Red Hot

by aquandrian



Series: Any Bets? [2]
Category: Holiday (1938)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Sibling Incest, adult incest, m/f/m
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-15
Updated: 2008-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:39:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/aquandrian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All bets are off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Hot

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Any Bets?, definitely won't make any sense without it.

Day by day, week by week, Ned learns to make a life for himself in New Orleans. For a while, all he does is walk. He takes long meandering strolls through the streets, no two the same, thronged with greenery and music wafting from restaurants and shops over the slums and mansions and cemeteries. Very quickly, Ned learns to stay away from the wrought iron gates and all those unnerving tombs of marble with their hellish icy angels under the ancient trees dripping moss. The city itself enchants him with its cacophony of so many colours and cultures, so vital and vibrant.

He eats at a different place every day as his thirst diminishes and his appetite returns. Seafood and French pastries, rich fragrant wet stuff on rice and deeply spicy meats. The alcohol seems to soak into the air, soak into his skin as the summer deepens. He learns to recognise the smells of magnolia, of honeysuckle, of swamp wind and sea breeze. On another continent, war has begun but all that seems a distant nightmare, like the life he left behind on the Avenue.

Linda and Johnny let him do as he pleases. He sleeps in a room quarter the size of his old one, plaster walled with a tiny window, cane shaded, that looks onto the street of raucous hawkers and laughter in the day, noisy tram cars and knife fights in the night. The moon shines across his narrow lumpy bed, sometimes the midnight breeze brings honeysuckle and brine into his dreams.

He dresses differently these days, mostly loose white shirts over loose tan trousers. He has no money but the clothes appear on his bed without a word and he wears them with quiet gratitude. They’re not new but they’re clean and that’s all right. A pair of tan and white wingtips, slightly battered, appear a few weeks later. Ned sits for a while and stares at them, unable to speak. When he comes out, wearing them, Linda’s smile shines particularly bright and he hugs her briefly, hard and wordless.

He doesn’t quite shave off the bushy beard of defiance but trims it back and shapes his reflection into something new. With the alcohol leaking out of his cells, his face looks haggard, hollows where there used to be baby fat. But somehow the dark eyes that were once too young and too full of pain don’t look so wrong in this new face defined by the sparse punctuation of stubble. Ned Seton no longer, these days he goes by Neddie.

___________

 

Some days he comes back to find the small apartment full of little black children and poor white kids roaring with laughter and throwing paint around with Linda in the middle, splattered with colour and tumbling across the sun dappled floor under a heap of energetic bodies. She teaches at the small parish school around the corner and, in typical Linda fashion, thinks nothing of bringing her students home. Ned joins in, flinging cushions, and she laughs at him, long swinging pigtails and pink mouth and blue sparkling eyes.

When he first plays, he plays for the children, simple nursery rhymes set to simple melodies, and they teach him their traditional songs. True voices singing words they don’t understand, singing with ease and friendliness, sharing their past and their present with him without qualm. Ned plays for them and himself, listening now to the world outside and to the silence within him. It’s not the deafening emptiness of before, it’s a different sort of thinking quiet, the quiet of absorption and waiting, watching.

Sometimes he plays for the parish, if Linda asks. It’s a congregation of black and white and brown faces. Occasionally a parishioner will come up and tell him how much they enjoyed the way he accompanied this hymn or that. The priest doesn’t know quite what to make of him but has been too thoroughly charmed by Linda to protest. And eventually, the musicians in the congregation approach him. Black guys with wary eyes and shabby suits who remark on his playing, carefully examine his nonchalant responses, and eventually relax enough to invite him to this club or that.

______________

 

Ned stays away from the clubs for several weeks, afraid of slipping right back into the terrible game of fog and pain. Some evenings, he’ll meet Johnny at the small local bank and walk home with him through the city waking to the dizzy dangerous night. Johnny does most of the talking, tells Ned stories of his childhood, the friends he made at the steel mill or the yard. It’s a world of people who suffer and yet still live, still love. It takes Ned several nights of stories to realise that all of Johnny’s family is now dead. So he asks again to hear this story or that once more, to keep the memories and the myths and the future alive.

They pass drunks and whores and doorways spilling the sounds of piano and percussion and the burble of brass. And every time, he feels Johnny’s sideways glance, feels like the yearning is written all over his face, scrawled like notes in the sheets of his skin.

One night he does say it, that one of the parish fellows had told him of a performance, not sure if he’s asking Johnny’s permission or just talking. Johnny makes some murmur of agreement, distracted by a whore squalling out at him and flashing lacy black panties. Her private hair has been dyed a garish red. Ned thinks Johnny may have gone just as red under his tan.

But when they come to the club, Johnny says casually “How about a drink, old man?”

Ned knows he looks frightened, curses himself. “Tonic,” adds Johnny with a touch of irony, “tonic for the nerves, eh?”

“All right,” says Ned, the words a sequence of tiny shocks in his throat.

The club is underground, a dark smoky hole of perfume and grog. Bodies huddle in the shadows, around small circular tables lit by single shielded candles, the acrid taint of hash mixing with sweat. Piano, drums and saxophone glint in the dimness, the trips and thrums of notes sliding across bare brick walls to curl around Ned’s breathless beating heart. It’s like fire, like electricity, seizing him up and out of his body, pulling him into the arrangement, between the melody and the percussion line, like he belongs nowhere but there.

Johnny says nothing, simply brings them both tonic. They sit for an hour in the shadows and watch. Ned’s in agony, the quiet within him now charged and trembling like some animal not sure whether to fight or flee, not sure whether to destroy or create. Ned forgets the glass in front of him, forgets the man beside him, forgets the world and disappears into the vivid colours flashing and dancing around him.

Only when the trio take a break does he breathe and look down. The glass has a circle of puddled condensation around the base. And when he glances to the side, Johnny’s watching him with a tiny smile deep in the contours of his face. Ned fidgets and stammers “Linda, she’ll be waiting.”

______________

 

He should get a job but has no idea what he could do, who would want to employ him, a poor rich kid struggling to stay on the wagon who can’t even string a sentence together. He’s never had Linda’s charm or Julia’s confidence and he’s too ashamed to ask Johnny for advice on this score. So he helps out as much as he can around the apartment. Some of the older schoolgirls notice and one day, they offer to teach him how to cook. Ned panics for several terrible masculine moments then accepts.

The first time, he nearly burns down the apartment. Amid shrieks and yelps, the girls help him douse the flames and take him for po’boys. Johnny roars with laughter when he comes home to this story and Linda’s trying very hard not to giggle, a hand over her mouth, her eyes merry. “Oh thank you,” Ned says acidly, “thank you so much!” Which makes Johnny sling an arm around his shoulders and plant a smacking kiss at his sweaty temple as Linda topples back onto the couch in a fit of giggles. Ned elbows free, secretly happy.

By the time the smell of char fades, he’s managed to make red beans and rice. Even though Linda’s a far better cook, she’s only too happy to let him do dinner most nights. They fall into a routine, the three of them. 

Ned will get up late — some habits are harder to break than others — and wander down for breakfast at his favourite bakery. He has coffee and a beignet, waking up slowly to the sights of people and children and animals in the colourful sweltering city. Sometimes he reads the paper but lately the news is more and more distressing. It seems as if just when he’s getting his life together, the rest of the world begins to fall apart. This realisation upsets Ned so much he stops getting the paper, preferring instead to watch and listen.

The sounds of people fascinate him these days. The way Linda and Johnny speak, the sharp clatter and sweet tones of her voice, the clipped consonants and turned vowels of Johnny’s speech, the way his vocal rhythms blend into hers and hers into his. Ned listens to the way the Creole and the white folk talk, the lovely slurry French sounds and the treacle notes of the black people, the rolling chants of the islanders. Even in the ever present sense of danger, all these people seem to live together, taking the same honest hard edged delight in the world.

He spends his days in a variety of ways. Strolling, helping out at the parish school, reading at the local library. Linda likes to keep posies of honeysuckle flowers on a side table, their light fresh scent floating through the apartment. So every day, he picks a fresh bunch on the way back. Before she comes home, he tidies up the apartment, deliberately blind to the spectre of his disapproving father in the corner, and he starts dinner. The baker’s wife gives him recipes and tips. And over the weeks, Ned gains some confidence, dares the spicier Creole dishes. Sometimes they’re delicious, other times the three of them have to fight in the doorway of the toilet.

Linda comes home before dusk in a whirl of chalk dust and gardenia, full of stories about the children. That subtle joyful light has blazed higher around her. Her clothes are brightly coloured these days, blues and pinks and sometimes yellows, her long red hair twisted up in a careless top knot. She still moves fast and talks several miles a minute but there’s a steady driving force and a deep contentment to her now. Ned listens as she moves through the apartment, from bedroom to bathroom and back into the kitchen, talking all the while, her hands light and sharp through the air, her hair falling out of the pins.

It’s not always amusing little anecdotes. Sometimes she comes home in a rage, spitting and railing about the terrible suffering of the children at the hands of an indifferent economy and a hateful society. And sometimes, she cries. Ned will hold her, sick with inadequacy, until she sniffles back the last of the tears, wipes her face and sits up. And the next morning, she goes back to the parish school, chin set and eyes determined.

Johnny comes home just after sunset when the apartment is fragrant with spice and the curtains billowing on the sea breeze. A record creaks and hisses, turning out Louis Armstrong or Fats Waller. It’s a strange sort of domesticity, not always comfortable. Johnny and Linda fill the apartment with their discussions, their voices loud, quick to flare up but quick to dissolve into absurdity. Linda with her scarves left across chairs and her shoes overturned, strands of fiery hair caught on couches and clothes. Johnny with his pipe scattering tobacco and his papers strewn over tables, his cologne deep and musky in the cushions.

They eat around the small table, Linda and Johnny usually discussing the day’s news, either local or political. This great country has declared neutrality from the war in Europe but it may or may not be good for the economy. Ned can’t really bring himself to care, happy just to be here with people who care about him, warm with food and music.

After dinner, Linda will wash up while Johnny and Ned make coffee and have the kind of aimless conversation men have. They sprawl on the ragged old couches, avoid the occasional broken spring, and listen to the record in affable silence. Unlike Ned, Johnny has kept himself ruthlessly clean shaven, excusing it as an old financier habit. At which Ned always laughs. Johnny’s dropped some weight, a leaner almost harder version of the young banker Ned met more than a year ago now, and his clothes are a little looser, lighter in this southern climate. But that sunny energy is still there, heat banked behind the clear brown eyes that still follow Linda around the room.

When the record ends, Ned will invariably move to the small rickety piano in the corner. It’s not something he plans, the first time was quite unconscious. When he found himself with his fingers on the keys, his back exposed to the room, to their gazes, he stiffened. But they said nothing. And in a painful breathless moment, he tried a few notes. Precious Linda, she’d made sure this piano was in tune too.

They don’t comment on his playing as a rule. Occasionally he may get a casual “That’s nice, Neddie” or “Good stuff, fella” which suits him fine. It’s too early for pressure and he’s grateful they realise this.

So Ned feels out scales on the white and black keys, his mind drifting in lazy circles on the swamp flower breeze. His feet are bare, one resting on the slightly clammy pedal, the other turned toes into the floor, his instep tender and cool. To one side, Linda murmurs to Johnny and the two of them chuckle between themselves.

He knows without looking that they’re on the couch together, snuggling. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Linda’s slender denim clad leg slide over Johnny’s knees. Her toenails are painted a perfect coral pink, delicate and neat. Under the hesitant melody he finds, there is the sound of lips meeting, sticky and sweet.

______________

 

Sometimes they forget he’s in the room, they kiss and cuddle and whisper to each other on the couch, touch and slide hands beneath clothes. Sometimes he watches out of the corner of his eye, his fingers steady on the ivory. Sometimes they’re the ones to leave, Linda leading Johnny to their room as Ned pretends not to see. Sometimes he’s the one who gets up to go lie in his bed, listening to the sounds of them and not touching himself.

It’s natural, he supposes. They’re still relative newlyweds. And maybe they’ll always be like this, passionate and twined up in each other, relentlessly fascinated by the skin and breath of each other. On a weekend morning, Ned will look across the breakfast table to catch the moment when Linda trips her fingertips up the curve and contour of Johnny’s bare brown arm, her eyes flirtatious as Johnny watches her with that deep hint of a smile.

Then there are times he walks out of his room to find them standing by the sink and he’s caught by the contrast of dark against brilliant as Johnny nuzzles beneath the fall of red wild hair, that strong brown arm firm across her waist, and her sharp chin upturned in the moment of a bright laugh.

When he helps Linda with the laundry, he goes into their room and the sheets are ripe with the smell of sex and sweat and gardenia. He strips the wide soft bed and so many pillows, bundles the linen up and takes them to her still talking about the parish and Johnny. Her hopes and dreams for the two of them, this apartment, a dog, children one day. Ned makes a small sardonic comment about an uncle who falls off roofs and Linda laughs, thwacks him with a pillow case.

Their rooms share a wall, thin plaster that may as well not be there. Between the rattle of streetcars and shouts and songs from the city below, Linda catches her breath and moans, tiny fluttery sounds that become longer and richer as Johnny makes love to her. Ned closes his eyes and doesn’t trust himself to move at all. He hasn’t been touched in so long, not like that. For so long, he hasn’t even been able to bear the thought. And this, this is a small terrible price to pay, to lie there and listen to the melody of their intimacy and know just how lucky he is to even know it exists.

______________

 

One night he comes just like that, to the sound of Johnny’s groan. It’s sudden and shaming, and he catches his breath, fearful of being heard. But a cat yowls across the street and someone breaks a bottle amid laughter. Ned rolls out of bed, sticky with sweat and semen, shaking slightly. His heart is pounding, too alive and beating hard in his chest, blood rushing too hot through him. His head is full of the scent of magnolia, thick and creamy on the breeze. Sinful.

He makes the decision without half a thought, pushes himself to his feet and to the tiny bathroom where he cleans up by the refracted streetlight through the window. He leaves the bathroom without looking himself in the mirror, puts on his shoes and closes the apartment door with care behind him.

He has no money but that won’t matter after a few hours of playing, jamming in any of the hole in the wall joints. All he has to do is accompany the saxophone player and for that they buy him drinks and that gets him attention. White boy with ragged dark stubble and a wild light in his eyes, his white shirt loose and half unbuttoned in the underground heat, the unconscious rhythm of jazz in his step. Oh yes, the women come.

Ned finds his way home in the bright clear morning, smelling of smoke and sex and whisky, lipstick on his neck and bite marks on his chest. Linda and Johnny are at the breakfast table, frozen in almost comedic shock when he stumbles through the door and stops. His head is swimming, they look all freshly washed and pure, too beautiful to bear. “Morning,” he mumbles, fumbling to do up his shirt, shame stabbing at him. But most of the buttons have gone and he’s not sure he can stay upright.

“It’s all right,” he says suddenly, raising his head. And sure enough, Johnny’s glaring at him, tight lipped and furious. Linda’s too shocked to be angry yet. “It’s all right,” Ned insists, despairing at his slurred voice, “I’m not, I didn’t, I swear. It’s just — ”

He flails, battling through the shame for the truth. It’s important they know but will they believe, why would they believe?

“Never mind,” Johnny snaps, suddenly upright. The anger punches off him, cold from the dark eyes and that fierce chin. “No,” Ned mumbles helplessly, “you don’t understand.”

“I understand fine,” Johnny raps out, advancing on him.

“No, Johnny!” Linda has leapt into action, pushing between them, all concerned eyes and sleepy female warmth. “It’s all right, let him be. Neddie, come on, my darling.” Her arm is around him, her hair against his face.

“No.” Ned tears free and lurches back around to Johnny, gets right up in his face. “No, you think you know, right? You think you know. Here.” He breathes full in Johnny’s astonished face. “There! You smell it? Do you?”

As Ned stumbles back, Johnny passes a dazed hand over his eyes and nose. “No,” Ned says thickly, “didn’t think so. Don’t worry, sister dear, Neddie can put himself to bed.”

He sleeps for a good twenty-four hours, bone tired and heart tired. At some point, Linda does come in because when he wakes, he’s out of his clothes and a light blanket drawn over him. Shamed, Ned turns over and burrows deeper into the pillow, falls back into an uneasy sleep.

That night over dinner, Johnny apologises to him. Linda is out at a parish gathering so it’s just the two of them. True to form, Johnny can’t cook so he’s brought them both po’boys. Ned has climbed out of bed and into the old trousers to come out of his room. His mouth is full of fried shrimp and baguette, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, at the moment Johnny says “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Ned chokes something violent. Between hearty slaps on the back, Johnny adds cheerfully “Thing is, that uncle of mine who used to fall off roofs? He used to go out like that every so often and come home with all manner of scrapes and filthy stuff.”

“Okay, okay,” Ned gasps, cringing away, the blanket slipping. “I’m fine. Stop.”

“Sorry.” Johnny sits back down, his expression suspiciously unrepentant. As he picks up his half eaten po’boy, Ned eyes him. “So you believe me,” he says, still unsure. Johnny gives him a mild look over the baguette spilling stuffing. “You proved it, didn’t you? Didn’t smell whisky coming off your breath. And I know what those places are like, you don’t have to drink to smell like a stinking brewery.”

“Right,” says Ned slowly. It couldn’t possibly be this easy, this ready forgiveness. His bare chest prickles, back stinging a little against the blanket.

“Right,” says Johnny and they go back to eating against the trills and treacle of Ella’s orchestra. But Ned can’t leave it alone. “It’s not that easy, you know. I mean, it can’t be. I could, you know.” It’s a stupid thing to say and he’s not doing himself any favours but somehow it needs to be said.

“I know.” Johnny is quite calm. When Ned keeps looking at him, Johnny’s eyes flick up. He seems to realise what Ned needs to hear because after a moment, his eyes harden and he says evenly “But you won’t.”

“Why not?” This belligerence comes out of nowhere but it feels welcome.

Johnny’s brow crinkles a moment. Still he counters “Because you’re better than that. You’re stronger than that. Linda thinks so. And so do I.”

The gentle insistent pressure of concern and he could chafe under this but it ties him to these people who owe him nothing. Ned looks down at his baguette and tightens his fingers around the bread. And he is grateful. He needs this.

Johnny’s hand clamps around the back of his neck, firm and strong. As Ned looks at him, those brown eyes gleam with affection, the smile curving deep. “You’re gonna be all right, kid.” He tightens his grasp for emphasis. Now Ned does want to chafe, not a kid, and yet yes, yes he is. But he looks at the strong hard curves and lines of Johnny’s face, smells the cologne and bankers’ ink, and knows he really isn’t.

Maybe it shows on his face because Johnny draws back. The living room light and air moves to fill the space between them. Ned pulls the blanket firmer around his shoulders and concentrates on finishing his baguette.

______________

 

A few weeks before Christmas, Linda comes home in the middle of the day. Ned turns from the piano, startled by the door opening, and then stands up, unnerved by her silent white face. “What is it?”

She looks at him for a long anguished second then holds out a fragment of newspaper. His stomach clenches, rallies and planes storming through his mind, as he smooths out the print. And then his stomach drops.

Edward Seton, entrepreneur and financial baron, passed away in his sleep a week ago. The funeral was yesterday. Flowers around the casket, lines of cars and people, all the big names turned out to pay their respects. And there by the head of the casket stands Julia Carruthers née Seton, ice elegant in her mourning black, the proper grieving daughter and sole heir.

Linda takes a few steps forward and Ned catches her as she falls, tears choking his throat and spilling down his face to soak into the curves of her glossy plait. They sit for what feels like hours on the bare floor, shaking, holding onto each other. And the horrible thing is she doesn’t cry. Ned cries for both of them. Only it’s not grief, it’s rage, a tearing inexplicable rage. It isn’t fair, it was never fair, and now it can never be fixed. Whose fault is that?

Johnny finds them like that, bursting into the apartment to stop short, suddenly constrained by the pain coming off them. Ned looks at him over Linda’s bent head and Johnny says “Oh my dears.” Drops the briefcase and comes to put his arms around both of them, still in his light overcoat, smelling of the street. Linda holds onto them and shakes, unable to cry, their breaths mingled together.

That night, Johnny wakes Ned up with a shout of panic. Linda’s crying now, huge soundless gasps as her body curls on the bloodstained bed. “Help me, Ned!” yells Johnny and Ned jerks out of the doorway. He runs for the doctor, his heart slamming against the bones of his chest, and the doctor rushes back with him. But it’s too late, she’s lost the child and Ned never even knew.

While she sleeps in a medicated peace, Ned sits in the darkened kitchen with Johnny and watches his brother-in-law drink himself into oblivion. This time, Ned’s the one to put his hand on the back of a man’s neck, steady and strong. But he can’t say everything will be all right. He doesn’t know and maybe it won’t be. Johnny’s hand fastens over his, keeps it there, trembling silently, and Ned remembers. This is what family is, this is what family does.

It’s not a good time but over the next two weeks, Linda’s even more determined to make Ned’s first Christmas in New Orleans a fine and joyous occasion. That is one of the two things that keeps him from picking up the bottle again. Linda gets the children to come over and help put up decorations and they make a night out of trimming the tree. It’s nothing like a New York Christmas in bitter snow for which Ned’s immensely grateful and says so. They laugh and throw handfuls of popped corn at him. A tussle ensues with the excited children falling over him and Ned bellows happy outrage.

The Potters sail from Paris and arrive on Christmas Eve in a flurry of presents and wine and excitement. They don’t look a day older and hug Ned with just as much joy as so many months ago at the wedding. Ned plays at Christmas Day mass, the church packed and raucous with children and people giving thanks for what they’ve been given this year. 

That night while their small group sit on the old couches in the brightly lit living room, he carefully plays for them the latest version of the Seton Concerto.

Linda sits with her legs curled beneath her, a little pale but smiling with such pride. Her hair has been braided into tiny precise patterns, cornrows the black girls said, and her face looks even sharper and rarefied, all cheekbones and hollows, saved from coldness by the warmth of her lively blue eyes. And behind the couch, Johnny stands with a glass in his hand, amber catching the light, amber in his eyes with that deep bright joy, his hair a smudge of boyishness on his forehead. And there are the Potters listening hard, their faces intelligent and watchful. With all the trouble on the Continent, Linda and Johnny have persuaded them not to go back, to stay here in New Orleans.

Ned still wants to impress them. His concerto is nowhere as innovative or exciting as he’d like but they clap and cheer and predict great things for the year to come. In a tiny apartment with the smell of fried catfish on the swamp air and gospel harmonies floating up from the street, it’s the happiest Christmas he’s ever had.

In the week before the new year, they all go to see a new picture at the cinema. When Atlanta burns, Ned realises he’s flanked by two couples, one old and one young. Tomorrow may be another day for the whore on the screen but he’s still alone. And for the first time, he realises it doesn’t have to be that way.

______________

 

1940 dawns with Ned determined to make change. He talks one of the musicians from the congregation into letting him join their trio, turning it into a quartet. They play frequently at a little club down Bourbon Street where the women flock freely and make eyes at Ned through the smoky air. Linda and Johnny come a few times to watch him play, their faces unreadable, but soon they leave him to his own devices. And maybe it works out wonderfully for them to have the apartment again to themselves most nights of the week.

The first woman Ned selects is a white girl with badly bleached hair and a lush little body. Her mouth is warm and smells of gin. He gets a little drunk after kissing her which is probably half the reason he goes home with her. She takes him back to her tiny one room above a loud French restaurant. The sheets are scratchy but he doesn’t care, pulling her down over him. She giggles, laughs a bit too shrilly until he kisses her quiet and rolls her under him. Maybe he’s a bit too fierce, a bit too rough but she doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, she arches against him, her cunt wet and sucking at his cock, and when she comes she digs her fingernails into his arms and whines.

They sleep together for two and a half weeks before she leaves town with some black saxophone player. Linda and Johnny never did meet her and for that, Ned is grateful. 

The next girl he goes out with is Melisande, the daughter of the Creole couple who own his favourite bakery. She’s tall and slim, sharp eyed and clever, with hair twisted into hundreds of little braids. They’ve been exchanging smiles and comments on the weather for months now. Until one day when Ned looks up and realises just how very attractive she is. It takes him a week of intense flirting and persuasive argument before she’ll agree to go out with him. And even then, it’s behind her parents’ backs.

Ned knows half of the pleasure is the illicit thrill but he persuades himself too that he wants more than just to touch skin of a colour he’s never touched before, to kiss a forbidden mouth. They go to see Sonny Boy Williamson the second play in a rough little bar down in the Quarter and Ned grips Melisande’s hand when it hits him fully that he’s in the same room as a man who played with Robert Johnson, who maybe was with him when he died. The harmonica sounds scratch up inside his chest, an irresistible rhythm of tiny sounds layering and layering with the breath and soul of the man sawing back and forth, air over steel, air through steel. He rocks with Sonny Boy and Melisande holds tight to his hand but Ned’s going, going, gone on the melody.

He kisses her in an alley and she lets him, the two of them giddy on the aural magic throbbing through the Louisiana air. She tastes like honey and whisky, her fingers curling in the loose thin material of his shirt, the scent of her thick. He wants to fuck her then and there but she won’t let him, pushes his hand away and steps from the brick wall, her eyes bright and cheeks heated. “Not now,” Melisande says and Ned remembers with chagrin that he does actually like this one.

They kiss briefly at the back door of the bakery, her smile vivid in the dimness. Ned walks home with the taste of honey in his mouth and the scent of her braided hair filling his head. When he lets himself into the shadowed apartment, Johnny is getting a drink of water.

“Good night?”

Ned beams. “The best.”

Johnny’s brows raise. “Ah. What’s her name, then?”

“Melisande.”

“Ah.”

They exchange one very male grin and Ned goes to bed, listening to the muffled murmur of Johnny’s voice and Linda’s sudden soft squeal of delight.

Two days later, Melisande’s mother tells him stiffly that she’s gone to live with relatives in South Carolina. Stricken, Ned can find nothing to say as she sets down his coffee and beignet and walks back into the bakery. He stares across the street to where a couple of fellows are putting up banners for Mardi Gras. This is change, is it? Pushed back every single time he tries to move forward, trying to make this new life work.

He goes without breakfast for the next few days and then finds another bakery to visit. When Linda asks what’s wrong, he tells her shortly and changes the subject. Johnny watches him with a crease between his brows but says nothing.

______________

 

The day before Mardi Gras, excitement already shivering the humid air, Ned stops by the parish school, intending to take Linda for lunch at a new seafood joint. The children are playing in the grounds, shrieks and songs in the bright sun. And Ned ducks under the window sill, ready to pop up and surprise her.

What he hears is Susan Potter’s careful voice saying “My dear, it’s not natural.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s a grown man, surely you can see that. Surely he deserves his independence, to live in his own home and find his own family.”

”We are his family,” Linda retorts sharply. “We’re the only family he has left!”

“I know, my dear. Believe me, I know. But there’s no reason he can’t make a new one. He’s nearly thirty years old. Doesn’t he want a wife and children? A man like him needs to stand on his own two feet.”

“He is,” insists Linda with less heat. “He’s playing at the club. You don’t understand Neddie. He’s not like other men, he’s sensitive. He needs — ”

“He needs to be his own person, Linda. You can’t keep him tied to you forever. He’s not your child.”

Then Linda does make a soft cry of despair. Ned creeps away from the school and punches an alley wall until his knuckles turn red. Not a smart move for a pianist but it makes a far greater sense.

When she comes home, he’s trying without much success to bandage his hands. “Silly Neddie,” says Linda with a grin and does it for him. He looks at the honeysuckle flowers wilting on the side table. He can’t look at her.

______________

 

Mardi Gras explodes in fireworks of red and blue and gold, shattering the night sky, raining down booze and flowers and feathers and beads. The drums thunder the stones of the streets, the people dance themselves into birds and animals and myths and dreams, bursting the staid silent light into a thousand vibrant colours, into a thousand different songs. 

There’s the cockerel two storeys high, floating down the street, massive jet black feathers shimmying into women of barely covered curves, the huge dark eye finding Ned dazed in the crowds of cheering dancing people. There are musicians from hell, demons of gorgeous black skin and demons of pure white skin contorting themselves into positions of obscene beauty around their sinful divine guitars and fiddles and horns. There’s a woman spreadeagled between two crosses, her ice blonde hair streaming on the breeze, dragging the darkness. Her face is a smooth white mask but she’s naked and pale, glistening with oil and shiny stuff, arching between the struts. And from between her thighs, from the place of hidden flesh and pale hair dribbles one, two, three, a multitude of snakes that fall to the ground and slither and hiss, biting at heels and ankles. Ned nearly falls, trying to get away, but the crowd carries him in the heat of bodies and song.

Knives flash in shadows and in light. He sees familiar faces but they’re changed, swollen with alcohol and desire. The crowd spins him one way, then the other, and in the midst of it, his father catches him. Ned buckles at the knees, heart spasming, as he clutches at strong arms and looks up at this figure, tall and immaculate in the gleaming black tailcoat and top hat. His father grins at him and it’s not his father, it’s a man wearing the mask of death who holds his face between gloved hands and says something lost in the whirl of drums and song, and then is gone, vanished into the crowds of dizzy dangerous celebration.

The streets are lined with stalls of food as if the restaurants and bakeries and delicatessens have overflowed with so much gorgeosity. Under awnings and banners of bright colours range tables laden with platters of strange vegetables next to stoves firing pots of bubbling gumbo and jambalaya, iron burners under lobsters and crayfish sizzling in butter, meats roasting in fragrant smoke, and booze, so much booze. Dogs weave through the crowds, loiter around the stalls and lie under the tables, hungry and eager, eyes glinting and mouths drooling.

Saxophones scream, violins slice into the night that erupts in a roar of flames. Heat on his face, Ned is grabbed and kissed by one female mouth then another and another, each spilling raw moonshine down his throat, down his chin. He tears away and spits but it’s gone to his head with fiery clarity, he understands now.

It’s Ash Wednesday tomorrow. Repent tomorrow, sin tonight.

And sin he does. Breasts and beads slick with sweat, the bare undulating curve of a woman’s belly, feathers and taut shiny stuff to point the way for his mouth. He drinks from lips and cunts, gets high on come and kisses, lets them trail greedy hands over his body and pull at his secrets. In red blazes and blue shadows, he drowns in flesh and comes again and again, spent and sparked over and over. It feels like an hour, it feels like days, so much decadence of touching strangers in intimate ways, so many clashing scents of flowers and skin and sweat and wine. And the drums, always the drums, pounding like blood, pounding like the devil’s percussion pulling him out of himself, freeing him wild.

Around a stumbling corner, down a dizzying street, in the midst of chaos, he goes. There’s a woman on either side of him, laughing and drinking, holding him up with hot flesh and hard bone. One white woman with ice blue beads snaked around slovenly breasts and a little pink translucent thing covering her bitten thighs, and one black woman with white beads hanging between her proud high breasts, naked except for the tiny jewels glinting in her wild hair and a single jewel glinting in the tender bare slit of her sex. 

He’s covered in their sweat and cunt scent, his hair ruffled and stuck to his temples. A long loop of red glass beads swings against his bare chest, white linen trousers barely fastened, creased and stained with wine and mud and come. Barefoot and uncaring, laughing at the delirium of existence, laughing at the grand terrible game of it all.

What he sees are musicians playing on opposite kerbs, guitars and banjos and horns and drums, trading riffs and chords and verses as people dance in the street space under the flame torches and paper lanterns and the night sky. It’s loud, it’s electric and tribal, never to be tamed. Ned lets go of the women and darts behind the musicians, snatches up a recorder. The melody bursts through him, swelling up in breath, air through woodwind. His fingers find the stops, his feet find the cobblestones and the music takes him.

Colour bursts of stars and suns and the wheeling reeling dance of the cosmos as the notes whirl through him, whirl the people around him. The drums punch through the sparkling patterns of strum and wail, thumping a furious heartbeat that throbs his spine and hardens in his hips, pushes him into the dance, frenzied and freeing. 

A woman falls against him, flame red hair flying against his face, lithe body warm. Ned spins her around, she laughs and he grins back, waltzes with her across the street where she spins out of his arms and another woman twirls into his embrace. Between the streamers and the blur of arms, he catches glimpses of scenes. Women shimmying on balconies, hair wild and loose, their naked breasts shining with sweat and glitter, bright chains of beads swirling through the sky. Men pounding drums pounding rhythm, slick and delirious, alive in the wild sound. Champagne spraying down from the balconies, diamond drops arcing in the blast of vivid light, falling upon the upturned white throat of a woman, loose hair flowing free, her long lithe back bowing up, rouged red nipples poking through a thin white shirt unbuttoned to her waist, tiny breasts framed by thin black straps of suit braces, black male trousers sleek and spattered. The liquor slips down the pale smooth skin between the edges of her shirt, glistening as she raises her arms and screams to the skies, a sound of joy.

The drums triple and crash, Ned opens his mouth to the rain of white rum, a woman catches him around the waist and kisses him, her body all lush heated satin curves, her tongue bold. He bends her back and whirls her off into the arms of another woman, and as he turns he catches a glimpse of a man twisting low, maracas blurring in his hands, his hair tossing across his forehead, brown waistcoat flying wide around a solid naked torso, abdomen muscles flexing under smooth tanned skin. Ned dodges and ducks his way to the nearest kerb, and one musician sees him coming, flash of dark eyes and bright grin. 

The pianist darts off into the crowd and Ned hits the keys, bare handed and hard heeled, the beat a wild animal flailing roaring within him. The musicians toss the rhythm back and forth, guitar wailing against his crashing melody, the horns punctuating, pushing him further. The sound layers and layers, builds and builds, up through the throbbing stones, through every vein and sinew, soaring into the colours bursting across the never ending night sky.

Slices of sin flash before him, male hands grabbing a male face to meet mouth to mouth, tongues red, women up against walls with their legs wrapped around naked thrusting male asses, their mouths red and open. Braids flying out as women dance like goddesses in the street and men go on their knees, backs arching in the dance of worship. 

Beads and flowers distorting as wine pours down from the balconies and Ned pushes up from the piano onto his toes to catch the liquid in his mouth, catching it in his lashes, feeling it drip across his bare chest. And there across the street, through the blur of alcohol, a man licks down the side of a woman’s white throat, his mouth wicked with a grin, his tongue darting down between her small breasts, down that glistening smooth skin as her hand twists in his strong black hair. Ned hammers on, vicious and violent, the ache of lust coiling deep in his belly, eyes burning and mouth dry once more.

Tribal drums thud from the opposite kerb, the flash of hard hands and sweat flying from massive black shoulders. Beside him, the drummers push back, the sound roaring and rising until Ned falls back and someone else takes his place. There’s already a woman reaching her strong black arms and red wet mouth for him. He twists his hand in the fuzz of her hair, sucking on the taste, and would push her against a wall, his cock hard and hurting. 

But a hand pulls him away and there’s a flash of blue eyes and pink mouth before he’s kissed harder and without question, fingers digging sharp into the bones of his face, claimed and claimed as if there’s no possibility of rejection. Ned stumbles and falls into that mouth, sweet and hot like champagne and honeysuckle, clutches at slim hips and feels the long lithe body pushed into him. She kisses him breathless, with all the insane ferocity of an obsessed thing, as if she would erase every other touch of the night, and Ned grips the back of her head, lets her take, gives himself up, pushing back at her slim strong thighs and the heat between.

The fiddles screech and soar and he pulls away for oxygen, time only to gasp in one breath before a male hand clasps the back of his head and every fibre in Ned’s body screams for one second before the mouth takes his, burning and instantly addictive. He can feel her still, biting up the side of his neck, nuzzling and warm and needy. And he’s giving up more than he thought he had, clutching his free hand at a clean male jaw as he responds, tongue and teeth and so much taste of amber liquid and female insides.

“Mine,” she says and the man laughs, low and delighted, and Ned agrees, goes with them when they drag him away from the people, to the dimness of a park bench. It’s not yet Ash Wednesday and sin is the name of this terrible exciting game. She shoves him down onto the bench and climbs onto his lap, and this time he pulls her mouth to his, licking up inside, sharing the taste of male and female and male. She twists her hand into the beads strung around his neck, the hot glass searing small round shapes into his flesh, her hair falling long and loose and fragrant all around him. And he gropes blindly for the man beside him who finds him with mouth at his throat and fingers tangling with his at the open placket of her thin white shirt. 

Ned drags his lips down her neck and the man follows him, licks his mouth briefly before they follow the champagne strip of glistening white skin. She arches her back upright, her hands curling in their hair, as they peel back the transparent material and lick the rouge off her sharp little nipples, sucking at the slight sweet curves of her breasts.

They blow him on that park bench, such mouths of deep vicious hotness biting, taking it in turns, dark head against brilliant, but they don’t let him come. He blows the guy, swallows that hard fat cock, sick and delighted with the taste, knowing she’s kissing the guy as he pushes into Ned’s mouth. Glimpses of male hand in her hair, their mouths sticky and open, like each is pulling the taste of him out of the other’s mouth, taking and giving back. On his knees, ass bare in the humid February night, Ned clutches the base of his pulsing cock and sucks as he was sucked. 

The guy pulls off and comes all over Ned’s face and neck with a groan. The girl utters a rich rough moan and slips off the bench to smear the come down across Ned’s chest, her hands firm as she rubs it into his skin, her mouth a terrible beautiful addiction as she kisses him with something like pride.

And then Ned does pull away, the sudden shock of realisation and decision. He gets to his feet, leaving her there startled and bewildered. Fumbles for his trousers and pulls them back on, whimpering a little at the agony of his cock. The guy and girl don’t move, watching him with some fear. Ned turns his back and heads down the street.

They follow him back to the apartment. He takes their hands and leads them to the wide soft bed, dappled with moonlight and the spray of sparks across the sky. Against the distant thump of drums and in the wash of honeysuckle and brine, he strips the shirt from her and the waistcoat from the guy. Three pairs of trousers crumpled across the floor, they tumble together in a mess of skins and breaths, slick with sweat and booze, so much damp heat of moans from mouths of amber burn and pink champagne.

Her cunt is tiny and perfect, and Ned eats her out, smashed on the slippery flavour, as his ass is spread apart and licked in, penetrated with tongue and fingers, clever male relentless and wicked. Ned twists away before he can come and thrusts right into her cunt. She cries out and he doesn’t care, back bowing and bending over her so her blue eyes are wide and shiny in the glow of city light. She moans and pushes her fingers into the bones of his shoulders, clenches her cunt around his cock like something inhuman and demonic. 

He fucks her without mercy, driving her body like the drums drive him, and she takes it, clutches at him and cries out, savage and joyous. When he comes, cruel and beautiful and on his own damned terms, he bites her and she comes in waves of convulsions around him, her moans blending into a long melody of shattering pleasure.

Ned rolls off her and onto his stomach, body aching but soul determined, looks over his shoulder. “Your turn.” And the guy surges forward, all hard cock and hard muscle and amber dark eyes. He opens up Ned’s spent body, loose with pleasure, and his cock pushing inside is like nothing Ned’s ever known, could ever have imagined. Ned digs his fingers into the soft worn sheets that smell of gardenia and cologne, his throat hoarse, and feels his flesh harden impossibly with the rake rake rake of another man’s cock over the insides of him, all the nerves and tissues raking alive in unbearable sensation. The guy puts a hand on the small of his back, his breath a ragged relentless rhythm, and Ned’s not sure if it’s pleasure or agony when the guy comes inside him, hot and wet and impossibly intimate.

They lie together, the three of them twined in breath and skin and scent. She kisses Ned’s ear, nuzzles his cheek with a delicate hesitation. For a long while, all they can do is trade light kisses and the barest of touches, too sensitive for anything more. Mardi Gras bumps and grinds on in the street below, and Ned breathes in the swamp scent of cock and cunt, feels it creep inside his soul and stick to the insides of him. He kisses her hair, wine dark in the night, he mouths the guy’s cheekbone and is kissed with tenderness from one then the other, a hand sliding across the muffled thump of his heart. He crawls over their bare bodies, learns them slowly and with care, rubs his stubble across tender inner arm and smooth abdomen skin, slides his face against private hair drenched with sex and the strong curve of jaw. They touch him as he explores, the benediction of acceptance.

When he’s ready, Ned straightens up and curls his hand around his interested cock. The moon slants in through the open window, sea breeze cooling the moisture on his nude body. The red beads still looped against his chest glow with a cold intense flame. He wants and he will have, this he knows. She leans forward and touches his thigh. And the guy sits up, slides a hand around the side of his neck.

Ned fucks and is fucked, his cock into the deep giving heat of cunt, the beads rubbing against her small sharp nipples, as his body clenches around the cock sliding deep and driving into him, firm hand on his nape. Safe between the two of them, skin and skin and skin, breath and breath and breath. Claimed three times over, as Ash Wednesday dawns.

______________

 

New Orleans in the morning is a city slumped in exhaustion but somewhere in the distance is the faint bright trickle of a music box. Ned has disentangled himself gently from two sleeping bodies, put on an old white shirt and a fresh pair of trousers, and come out to get pastries for breakfast. There are people sleeping in doorways, alone or in heaps, dogs curled up and peaceful in the brightening sun. The streets and kerbs are strewn with beads and broken glass but there’s the scent of flowers on the air, bringing the promise of clean and new.

Ned picks a bunch of honeysuckle blossoms and comes back to the apartment to find Linda and Johnny fighting. He pushes open the door just in time to see the flame red hair whirling around and a white hand striking a tanned unflinching face. She slaps him and Johnny takes it. But when Linda turns to storm off, he grabs her wrist hard. And Ned hears his own voice rapping out, cold and furious. “Case!”

Johnny doesn’t look at him, looks only at Linda’s flushed angry face as he speaks with even precision. “Fuck off, Neddie. This has nothing to do with you.”

Linda tears herself free. “You liar! How can you say that?”

“What do you want me to say?” Johnny yells into her face, the violence of him frightening. But she’s too furious to be afraid, screaming right back into his face. “Say I’m right! I’m right, Neddie belongs with us and you know it. Say it, why can you never say it!”

“You — !”

His hand flies up, curls in a fist and Ned has his pianist fingers snapped around that wrist, digging in, pushing down. Johnny’s eyes are startled, almost betrayed, amber in the brown catching the light. Honeysuckle scent floats up, crushed underfoot. Ned forces his arm down, bitterness through his teeth as he says with vicious irony “Here now, Case … take it easy.”

Linda is against his back in a sudden assault of heat, her arms tight around his waist, cheek against his nape. But it’s to Johnny she speaks, low and defiant. “I want him, he’s mine, he’s always been mine.”

Ned meets Johnny’s gaze, the brown eyes mild now. With a hint of sadness, Johnny tells her “Now it’s you who can’t see what I’m getting at. Are you going to hold onto him all his life, just like your father did?”

Ned stops breathing. The words hang in the air between them, snaking like ice blue eyes. Linda’s fingers clutch at the skin of his abdomen, her coral nails crescents of need. She breathes into the curve where his neck meets his shoulder, short bursts of agitated warmth, her heart thumping fast against his back through the thin pajama top she wears.

Johnny turns away, slow and sad. He hasn’t put on a shirt, all the muscles of his back smooth and strong above the pajama trousers. Ned’s chest begins to hurt.

It’s Ash Wednesday. Time to repent. And Johnny’s gotten there first, with all the principled care and responsibility that he always had, taking care of people who can’t or won’t take care of themselves, loving just that hard.

“If it wasn’t for Father,” Linda says fiercely, “if it wasn’t for that, would you still want him? To stay, to belong to us always?”

Whereas Linda has finally learned to follow only her heart, damn the consequences, damn morality and society and everyone else. Johnny looks at her with some undefinable blend of emotion, of desire. As if Ned doesn’t stand between them, caught in this endless moment between pain and love.

“Would you?” Linda insists.

Johnny raises his hand slow this time and Ned stays still, watching. This close, he can smell the sleepy warmth off both their bodies. Johnny fits his hand to the side of Linda’s face, the curve of his palm cradling the curve of her cheek. His voice is tender. “Linda … he’s not ours to have.”

Then he does walk away. Linda disentangles herself, soft and shocked, and Ned looks from one to the other, heart stricken and helpless. She looks wounded. And Johnny refuses to turn around. Until the words form clear in Ned’s throat and clear in the air.

“Yes, I am.”

It’s his voice, and suddenly he hears both the boy and the man in that roughened voice. White boy with ragged stubble and bites all over his tender flesh, a sleeping symphony in his heart. Dark man with white scars of pain and beads like fiery marbles hot against the skin of his chest.

Johnny has stopped, watching him now with that crease between his brows. Ned looks from him to Linda watching him with the same puzzlement. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. Linda blinks and now Johnny does frown, displeased. 

“I don’t want to,” Ned says.

Skin and skin and skin. Breath and breath and breath. Safe between them. 

Johnny looks at him, silent and searching, not convinced. Linda is caught between so many emotions she looks like she can’t move. So Ned reaches out, lip caught between his teeth, and takes them both by the hand. His pianist fingers with bruised knuckles around Johnny’s strong tanned palm and Linda’s fine white hand.

Ned doesn’t hesitate, simply says it because it’s true and always will be. He knows this now.

“Everything I want is right here.”

**Author's Note:**

> My bad for all anomalies and anachronisms because there's only so far Wikipedia and Google will take me.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine. The characters belong to Philip Barry, totally awesome legend that he is. Although he prolly would turn over in his grave if he knew about this. Never mind how nervous I'm feeling about Hepburn, Grant and Ayres. Ulp. Thorry, guys, but it hadda be done. He deserves it, damnit!
> 
> Title from a Robert Johnson song; "sucks and is sucked, fucks and is fucked" from Queer As Folk UK by Russell T. Davies; here's Sonny Boy Williamson II playing in 1963; and obviously the film they see is Gone With The Wind. Again, bloody preternatural synchronicity. Hee.
> 
> Originally posted at http://aquandrian.livejournal.com/626916.html


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